Blackstone River report shows some trouble spots

Friday

Feb 15, 2013 at 6:00 AMFeb 15, 2013 at 7:49 PM

By Susan Spencer TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

The water quality at such Blackstone River headwater tributaries as Worcester’s Middle River and Cold Spring Brook in Sutton ranges from fair to excellent. But the picture in the Blackstone River itself isn’t so good: All nine testing sites in the river from Fisherville Pond in Grafton to Slater Mill in Pawtucket, R.I., are rated poor for nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen.

The nutrients cause excessive plant growth.

Problem hot spots can be readily seen in an annual Blackstone Watershed Water Quality Report Card, which will be presented at the Blackstone Water Quality Summit Saturday. The event, a “state of the river” update hosted by the Blackstone River Coalition, runs from 9:30 to noon at Brigham Hill Community Barn, 37 Wheeler Road, North Grafton. The public is invited.

“Nutrients are our big problem. We’re trying to get that message to people,” said Tammy Gilpatrick, Blackstone River Coalition’s coordinator for water quality monitoring.

She said that monitoring teams test the water at regular times between April and November. Water quality is noticeably affected after a rainfall.

“We definitely see the storm water impacts influenced by wet weather events on the nutrients,” Ms. Gilpatrick said. “It’s from all the runoff from pavement and natural phosphorus in the soil. The issue is because we’ve paved everything over, it’s just a flush of nutrients into the stream.”

Donna M. Williams, vice president of the Blackstone River Coalition, said the report card helps identify where nonpoint source pollution, including lawn fertilizer, human and animal waste and detergents, might be running into the waterway.

“We will relate it (report card results) to practices to help improve the quality of their local water body,” she said.

Ms. Gilpatrick said that for each of the last nine years the coalition has reported on five key factors along the river including aesthetics such as turbidity, odor and nuisance vegetation; water temperature; dissolved oxygen necessary to support aquatic life; oxygen saturation, which relates dissolved oxygen to the water temperature needed for cold- or warm-water fisheries; and levels of nutrients including nitrogen, which feeds excessive plant growth in saltwater, and phosphorus, which promotes excessive growth in freshwater.

Three local watershed groups sponsor water quality monitoring teams, including the Blackstone Headwaters Coalition, Blackstone River Watershed Association and Rhode Island-based Blackstone River Watershed Council/Friends of the Blackstone. Eighty volunteers test the water’s health at 77 sites in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, including the river’s tributaries.

The monitoring program operates under a Quality Assurance Project Plan approved by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.

Also at the summit, Woods Hole scientist John Todd will highlight the Eco-Machine and Canal Restorer pilot project in South Grafton, which he designed as a demonstration of a new approach to removing pollutants from the water.

The Eco-Machine, which looks like a greenhouse, pumps in contaminated water from the Blackstone Canal, filters it through a series of tanks with enzyme-generating mushrooms and bacteria-producing aquatic plants and animals, and releases the “inoculated” water back into the canal to clean the water downstream.

Ms. Williams said that initial results from the Eco-Machine pilot project show a 95 percent reduction in hydrocarbon particles from No. 6 heating oil leaked from underground mill tanks and an 80 percent to 85 percent reduction in nutrients filtered through plants in the processing tanks.

Participants will be invited after the summit to tour the Eco-Machine site adjacent to Mill Villages Park by the former Fisherville Mill.

The event is free but registration is requested by emailing Donna Williams at dwilliamsbrc@aol.com.

Contact Susan Spencer at susan.spencer@telegram.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanSpencerTG.